by Tanith Lee
“Before you came in, I was thinking,” she said. “I might as well leave you. But I suppose you won’t let me. You say you need me to pretend I’m your mistress.”
“How could we prevent you?” Stormy remarked flatly.
“There are seven of you. One of me. You all hate me, of course,” she heard herself say, with astonishment.
He said nothing.
She added, and again the bitter grievance in her voice amazed her, “I have nowhere else to go, in any case.”
“You miss the sunlight,” he said.
“Do I? No. What does the sun matter? I don’t miss anything. All this, all that—what does any of it mean to me?”
Shocked and dislocated, she had been—in a trance. It seemed they ran in her family. It had lasted two or three months. Above, the winter had filled the world. Down here, only cold night filled it. She was waking now. Had the stumble woken her, unlocking the choking hold on her heart? His hand had caught her arm, steadying, and rocking her like a tempest. The hand had woken her, not the stumble. Yet she had put her own hands on him already, in the disgusting black bath.
Two things happened to Coira. Her blood, her loins, burst into flame, melting like the silver from the mirror. And utter despair froze her, harder than an icicle.
If he guessed any of it, he did not reveal. But he did glance at her, and then away. He was scowling and his mouth had set in a grimace, as when he acted his part as the Sin of Rage.
Below the slopes were more areas of ramshackle lit-up nighttown. They wove through cots built of posts, and tents of rotted leather, and under the stinking holes of caves. Then they were down in a type of trough, and walked under the columned galleries of the cliffs, where, even so, the inescapable marble dust floated down and round in drifts. Soon they passed a subground entry to the quarries, deadly pale against the firelit dark. Some pale creatures sat there, dicing, like damned figures from a warning priestly book.
“There’s the boat,” said Stormy.
In panic, she thought he meant the boat to return her, via the River of Hate, to the upper world, and she exclaimed “No!” But her voice, once more amazing her, was inaudible.
It was not the ferryboat, but a kind of raft, and she saw they had reached the stream called Woe, which was quite wide.
“Payment,” said the old man who poled the raft.
“Forgo that,” said Stormy. “Hadz summoned us.”
“Oh, our Prince Hadz. Get on, then.”
Coira said, foolishly, “Is he really named Hadz—like the god of the dead?”
“Yes,” said Stormy.
They stood on the raft, which dipped and squeaked. The dark waters of the stream eddied about them, looking unnegotiable, and giddy and crazy as life itself.
But the gray old man determinedly poled them along, his back to them.
“What is your name?” Coira said to the dwarf.
His raging face did not alter.
“Mistress knows my name.”
“Stop calling me mistress. I won’t have it. Stop. Tell me your name.”
“Stormy. I play Anger.”
“No. Your name. Don’t you have a name?”
“It’s mine.”
“Oh, keep it, then.”
He grinned, but not glancing at her. “Are you having a turn, like Vinka?”
“Yes. But she has them when her courses are due or come on. They’re very irregular and that makes her worse.”
“Women’s mysteries.” He was humble, not coarse.
“I saw Hadz once. I mean, the god-king of death. When I was a child. I thought it was a dream … but now I think they took me there, into the wood. And I saw him.”
“You’re a witch. I thought you were.”
“My mother was a witch. The witch-queen.”
The stream was very wide now. The shore was visible on either side, but it was far off, and looked unreachable, and the lights smoked along it garishly, or there were no lights, and blackness yawned. As for the raft, it was flimsy. The old man was a phantom. And they were all in Hell.
Stormy said to her, “I heard—she was a cruel woman, your mother, that queen.”
“She hated me. They always hate me.”
“They hate dwarves too. Anything different.”
“I have no reason to be alive,” she said, without any passion or complaint. Yet her blood swirled and coiled and glittered like the frightful Stream of Woe.
“I had a mother,” said Stormy softly. He looked out, as she did, past the old man into the dark, where they were going. “No father, mind you. She gave me a shiny name. Then she saw what I was going to be, so she threw me off a hill.”
Coira heard herself make a sound. Both of them ignored it.
“That’s how my ankles were shattered. I was about two. Someone found me. The ankles mended wrongly, but they mended. Then I was put into the mines. Don’t think I dislike mines. They’re my home. I know where I am, there.”
Coira said, “I must sit down. I’ll fall off into the water.” She sat down. Seated, he towered above her, but still he did not turn. She said, “It must hurt you so much—your ankle bones.”
He said, “My mother called me, before she threw me off the hill, Hephaestion.”
Coira put her head on her knees and cried.
The old man poled for their hidden destination.
After the raft grounded, they got off and went across the valley. He noted the skirt of her silk gown was soaking, as if she had wet herself or been monumentally fucked. But, poor thing, it was her tears.
The Christ knew what he felt.
No, he knew. But he put that aside.
It was almost the way he had felt for Vinka, once, before he knew) Vinka, and how she was or would never be. Almost, but not the same. For Vinka was one of his own race. And this giantess, so slender he could snap her in two, she was from the other breed of cattle called Mankind.
The valley was strange but Stormy—Hephaestion—did not notice it particularly. He did note the paved road which had been made there and which they presently got onto. The stones were uneven; it was probably less helpful than the shale and litter.
Ahead lay the mansion. A conglomeration of shacks and huts that joined themselves to caves in the cliff behind, at the valley’s back. It was like all the other dwellings of Elusion, save for being linked together. And there was a facade. A line of pillars had somehow been fashioned. Tree trunks, they seemed to be. There were nine of them, each one three times a man’s height, and they held up the lopsided edges of the shack roofs.
A living tree grew by the mansion—at least, perhaps it was still alive. The marble dust had coated it thinly, its curving boughs and lifted, fossilized traceries. A poplar. It was whiter than snow.
The pool lay behind it, the one called Lethe, or Forgetting. The water was said to be outright fatal, worse than the stream, but some figures were there, drawing it up in buckets and jars.
Hell’s prince had his own guard. One of these villains now came ambling over, bristling with knives and studs.
“What do you want?”
“I’m the dwarf Stormy, and this is my mistress. He sent for us.”
“Well, if he did and you don’t go to him, it will be a nasty thing for you. But he might not want you now. He’s sick today,” added the guard. Oddly, he marked himself with the cross. “That thing where he screams.”
“I’ve heard of that.” Stormy handed the guard a little pouch which held gold dust. “I found this on the way. Yours, I expect.”
The guard took the pouch, examined it, and let them into Hell’s mansion.
This was like life, too. You must even pay to be abused, as you were punished for being hurt.
But Coira did not care.
After her tears she felt cleansed and frivolous. She looked about her at the muddled interior. Lightless cells opened one into another, passages narrow as pins squeezed between. Everywhere sacking curtains hung down, but there were also curtains of sequined ve
lvet. The braziers and fire-pits caused smoke, as elsewhere, and people came and went on slavish missions.
They were taken to an overseer or steward in one of the small rooms. By then, they had heard howls ringing through the mansion. Not some victim under torture, apparently, but Prince Hadz.
She said boldly to Hephaestion, “Why is he sick?”
“Some pain that comes in his head. He’s always had it, so I’ve heard.”
“It must he very bad,” she said, careless.
Then the steward bulked in, a fat ruffian with earrings of gold.
He looked straight at Coira. “Been shedding rears? Why are you crying? Afraid we’ve found you out?”
Stormy said at once, “Mistress’s father was killed above ground. She’s always crying over that.”
“What killed him?”
“Wolves,” said Coira clearly. “They ate him alive.”
The steward grunted and turned away.
“You’ve cheated on your tithes to the prince. You have silver, a lot of it, and never gave him his dues.”
Another cry tore round the mansion. As if the dwarves had caused Prince Hadz’s agony by their defiant act.
“How long does his pain last?” asked Coira politely.
“That yelling? A day, sometimes two. But to return to your crime.”
Stormy spoke. “No crime, master. The silver was the property of mistress. Her father gave it to her. So we melted it down. And I have the prince’s portion here with me.”
Coira’s mind wandered from this. Yet it did not let go of him, of Hephaestion. Even looking up at the ceiling of the chamber, where black rags drooped like sleeping bats, Hephaestion was there. His hair is like black bats. No, it curls too much for that. Like coils of copper turned black. Black grapes. She smiled at her silly thoughts, and the overseer-steward again picked on her.
“What do you laugh at, you woman?”
Coira glanced at him. He did not matter, as nothing did, so she said, “There’s a herb that could assist Prince Hadz. Febrifuga.”
“Ah?” said the overseer. He was interested now in the silver ingots. “There’s more?”
Stormy: “No, master. It was only from a hand glass.”
“Someone told it was as big as you are.”
Stormy chuckled. “Someone dreamed.”
Coira watched the firelight dance here and there. And in black eyes that were only stones, shadows.
She heard the overseer say, “He found out you do an act of the Great Sins.”
“Sometimes, master.”
“He might like to see that, some other day.”
A heart-splintering cry rushed over now, beating with its wings to get free.
Coira bit her lip to stop herself laughing at the suffering of the world.
By the time they left the mansion, her tears were falling again. But many came out of that place sobbing.
According to the candles, further days and nights passed. Nothing might have happened. Even the dwarves’ unease about the silver and the thief-prince faded, for there were no more challenges.
Coira had begun to walk sometimes in the Underworld. More or less known now as belonging to the seven tough dwarves, she was not attacked and seldom accosted. She had no money, had never asked for any. She sold things instead in the market, one of the two uncouth dresses, the first pair of shoes they had bought for her, since replaced. She even considered selling her long hair, which she still covered over on her walks. She did not know why she did any of this. Was she preparing to leave the dwarves and go out alone on to the winter earth? Where would she go? Korchlava—why? And why would she go?
On the journey back from the valley, she and he had not exchanged a word. Save for the intermittant courtesies—Here, let me help you, the track’s worse—Thank you for your help.
They had ridden another raft only part of the way. He had stood by the polesman, this time a burly youth with one eye, exchanging local news. Avoiding her.
He had avoided her after, too. He did not always now come back to the shack-house. He let Soporo’s two women bathe him, or found some outlet of the river to wash in, or went dirty. He went off with Greedy, drinking at a still-shop up the cliff.
He. Hephaestion.
I could go to the city and become a whore. I could live by that.
I could live in some village, making up herbs for their illnesses, and hoping not to poison them by mistake, Because I never learned all Ulvit taught me.
I could go back to Belgra Demitu and slap UlVit’s face, or have her killed, as she tried to ruin me.
None of these things were believable. Such cities and villages and people no longer existed. (Did Ulvit? Did Arpazia exist?)
There was only the Underworld ruled by an unseen, howling arch-thief. And Hephaestion.
Alone in the shack, she said aloud to herself, “He is like her, like the Woman—my—perhaps my mother. He doesn’t want me near him. That’s why he stays away.”
But the most bizarre thing had happened. Coira, who had been lessoned that she might expect nothing from anyone else, did not at last credit that. She had been an infant, now she was a woman, and Hephaestion a man. It seemed to her—so very curiously—that she need only reach out, as if to some summer tree laden with glowing fruit—to pluck what she would have and feed herself over and over.
Coira did not know why she thought this, after all her other thoughts. Nor did she ask herself why young and handsome men had sometimes in the past moved before her, and she had barely seen them.
Hephaestion was a few years older than she, but had the looks of a man of thirty. He had the body of a tree. His feet were crippled. The crown of his head reached only just above her elbow.
It did not occur to her, in her feral and innocent desire, to wonder if he would feel used or patronized by her interest. It was in her awareness that to the dwarves, all of them, ordinary humans were foreigners, trustless but inferior.
But not she. Not she with him. Which was her idiocy, for why should she seem any different to him?
He was the height of a tall child, but had five times her strength. Twenty times her knowledge. His limping grace stunned her. His beauty made her heart scorch so she wanted to tear herself apart before him and throw the pieces of herself against his spurning flesh. Oh, she was the child, not he.
It was night. The time-candle said so.
Above, the upper floor shifted faintly as Proud and Tickle made love on their mattress. Soporo was off with his pair of lemans. Want and Vinka were silent and motionless behind their curtain. greedy was out drinking. Hephaestion too had not come in.
Coira had blown out her personal lamp, washed herself head to toe behind her own screen, put on her shift, in which Cirpoz had stolen her, and wrapped over that the ragged cloak.
She emerged, crossing over to heat a cup of watered wine at the fire-pit. She moved softly, not to disturb or alert the dwarves.
As she knelt there, she found she stared up at the mirror trethered to the wall. Blackened, occulted, and disregarded, she had nearly forgotten it all this while.
Coira got to her feet. She moved noiselessly to the mirror. Putting one finger on the muck, she scraped a little spot away.
She gazed into her own eyes then, that were like the eyes of the mirror itself.
Was this she? Or some sorcery …
To the eyes, whispering, she spoke.
“Make him come here. Make him come to me. Now. At once. Wherever he is. Make him come here. Mirror, mirror, make it true. Make him mine by power of you.”
How long she stood there, whisper-whispering, half-singing, without sound, her rhyme, again and again, she did not know. Miles off, she heard the wine boil over and go out harmlessly on the flames. (The pan would be spoiled.) She heard the surrealistic noises of Elusion, distant echoing shouts, filmy settlings from the mines, a baby that mewed and grew quiet.
Then, she heard—him, coming in at the door, and from her eye’s edge, saw the shadow that strod
e before him, high as the ceiling. He was a giant.
She was too afraid to turn. Then she turned.
He stood there, glaring sadly at the fire. He smelled of the acid brews of the stills, and of the river he had bathed in. And of skin and life, of himself, and uncannily familiar, as if she had known him always.
Coira drew off the burned-out pan, and filled another with diluted wine. She let it heat, then poured it in a cup. All this while he stood there, waiting. She handed him the cup. He drank, catching his breath at the wine’s temperature. Then he followed her to her alcoved wall of the shack. They moved inside the half-transparent curtain, and all the world was shut out.
“I made you come back,” she said, shaking aside the crow wings of her undone hair, arrogant in humiliation.
“I thought so. I felt it pulling me here, your spell. I knew you were a witch from the start. At the inn, when you made him leave you alone. Your mother was a witch, they said.”
“Perhaps not my mother. She hated me. Do you?”
“I? Hate you … you’re another race than mine.”
“Will it matter?” She drew in all her breath and said his name, “Hephaestion, will it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Am I repugnant to you?” she asked. But she stared in his face, and for the first time in her life, she felt herself to be (the mirror’s sorcery) beautiful. As beautiful as the queen, Arpazia—no, no, fairer far than Arpazia. Fairest in the world.
“Let’s not talk,” he said. “We can’t talk, you and I. Sit down.” She sat. He sat by her. This way, they were almost of a height. “I’ve had a woman, once or twice. I mean, your breed of woman. No unkindness was in it.”
Then she turned and pressed her face against his, her profile to his, her nose pressed into his, her eyes blinded by his, and her lips spoke on his mouth. “But I love you.”
He kissed her quickly, light, without meaning. He drew back slightly and said, “No, but you don’t, Coira.”
Her name. He had said her name. She put her hands around his head and locked her fingers in his hair and pulled him home again against her mouth. It was like the mirror, too, but he lived.